Garth Brooks Announces Multi-Year Stadium Tour

Garth Brooks will be back on the road in 2019 ... and beyond! After taking a break (sort of) in 2018, the country superstar has announced plans for a multi-year stadium tour.

Brooks announced his stadium tour plans on Wednesday (Oct. 17), during a press conference. He told the media members in attendance that he will be hitting 10-12 cities each year for three years. The first two stops will be The Dome at America's Center St. Louis, Mo., and State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., though neither dates nor onsale details were given; Brooks also alluded to a stop at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, as well as a stop somewhere in Texas.

"I wanted to call it the 'big-ass stadium tour', but they voted me down on that one," Brooks joked. "This is the most time I’ve ever put into anything ... All the logistics of it is a step up for me."

Brooks said at his press conference that he will announce the first five of his stadium tour stops before Christmas. The decision to announce the shows in 2018, Brooks explains, was all about making attending the show easier on fans: "They were [asking if] they could know about it a little bit more ahead of time, so they can plan their trips," he says.

Even fans who have seen Brooks live in concert in the past, he goes on to say, should have every opportunity to attend a concert on this tour. "This one is going to be so special, so rare, so far beyond the bounds of what we've done," he adds.

Brooks is still in search of his opening act(s) for the trek. "Opening acts are wide open," he commented. "That stage should belong to people that love song and are great entertainers. And we've got a lot of young ones here. I can think of five guys in my head right now." He added that he likes the idea of giving a younger artist a chance to step into a large arena: "You wanna take out an Ashley McBryde, someone like that -- a singer-songwriter kind of artist, but watch what she does in a stadium. She just shrinks it. Those are the good entertainers."

The Boot will update this story with tour dates and details as they are announced.

On Saturday (Oct. 20), Brooks will play Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind. Brooks is the first artist to ever perform at the venue. His last full tour, his 2014-2017 World Tour, wrapped up in Nashville in December of 2017.

"This was not a planned thing," Brooks admitted during his press conference. "We were supposed to take a whole year off," but because of the Notre Dame show, "We saw it as a blueprint of what could be."

Brooks explained that his upcoming new tour was initially slotted to be a college tour, but due to the facilities in the cities he was planning to play, he opened it up into a more general stadium run. Even as a veteran performer, the country star admits, he's feeling the jitters of trying something new. "I'm excited, scared, all the good things," he relates. "And I think it's just because it's new to us. The crew seems confident, the band sounds great, but it's just a step up for me."

Since ending his World Tour, which also featured Brooks' wife Trisha Yearwood as his special guest at each show, Brooks has released a new single, "All Day Long," in mid-June and has said numerous times that he's working on another studio album, to follow 2016's Gunslinger. On Nov. 20, he'll releaseThe Anthology Part III: Live, a collection of live recordings from throughout his career.